PREFACE 



The Sixth Edition of this treatise has shared the good 

 fortune of its immediate predecessors in meeting a public 

 demand which covered the available supply much sooner 

 than anticipated. Because of the desirability of keeping the 

 work abreast of the progress of a constantly changing and 

 developing industry, the publishers have assumed the bur- 

 den of resetting the type for each edition, resisting the 

 temptation of greater profit which would attend reprinting 

 from plates with minimum revision. Therefore this edition 

 is wholly set anew the seventh opportunity for free revi- 

 sion which the writer has enjoyed during the publication of 

 the work, which has reached a total of nineteen thousand 

 copies since the appearance of the first edition in 1889. 



Of the quality of the book, it does not become the writer 

 to speak, but he may express his satisfaction at its popular- 

 ity. Its circulation may be cited as a testimonial of its 

 suitability for service in the building up of the fruit indus- 

 tries, and the demand for it may be regarded as rather 

 unique, when it is remembered that the book deals exclu- 

 sively with the fruit growing of a single State which is only 

 one, although it be the greatest, of the agricultural interests 

 of that State. The demand for the book is an exponent of 

 the continued activity in California fruit planting, and its 

 sale abroad indicates the fact that the outside world is 

 watching California's fruit development, and desires to 

 know the methods by which such a great product as $100,- 

 000,000 'worth in a year is secured. 



The writer repeats the request which he has made in 

 earlier editions that all readers whose observation and work 

 teach them any better way than he has described in this 

 book shall share with him the advantages of such greater 

 wisdom. 



EDWARD J. WICKSON. 



University of California, 



Berkeley, May, 1914. 



